And I Would Walk 500 Miles
by ladywinterfic
Summary: Wherein Naruto makes a bet with Fate... and death is not the end.  - Formerly part of the Foxwife series.  Reincarnation fic, M/M, F/F, M/F, KakaNaru.
1. And I Would Walk 500 Miles

**And I Would Walk 500 Miles**

.o0o.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Naruto and am not making money off this.

**AN:** Brain was eaten by SheWhoHasLostHerMind's prompt and thanks to romantiscue for audiencing. XD Previously part of the Legends of the Fox-wife series.

**Warning:** KakaNaru, NaruKaka, non-explicit.

* * *

"He won't."

"He will."

"I'm telling you there's no way. It's a one in a billion chance."

"Is that a bet?"

"You'll stop talking my ear off if you lose?"

"If you'll give me eternity if I win."

"...Deal."

* * *

Kakashi found Naruto familiar because of his father and the memories pain him.

He is almost not entirely wrong.

* * *

The second time they'd met, the old silver-haired midwife looked at the squalling blue-eyed baby in her hands and immediately has a heart attack. She never even understood why before she keeled over.

The girl grew up always being vaguely pissed off about being somehow late and was annoyingly time-conscientious with everyone around her.

* * *

Naruto hates that he was left behind that first day, tied to the log. I mean, yeah, he was supposed to be able to get out of knots like those, there was a test on it and everything at the Academy, but he'd skipped most of those classes because the teachers liked to try and cut off his circulation during practice and he'd barely squeaked by on those grades.

He doesn't really consider why he's more outraged at the rest of his team than at his sensei. A part of his mind kinda expected it of the guy, somehow, despite never having met him before.

* * *

She needs to get across the ocean, she thinks. She tilts against the balcony and examines the streets below her and stares at the docks. She's heard of the lands there, wild and beautiful and rich and...and there's something to see, over there.

Her father flutters around her and bewails his beautiful blond daughter being too delicate for travel and locks her into her room. Thank god he never knew she could climb trees.

She slips away in the night, in a servant's dress.

_Across the sea_, her heart sings, _across the sea._

And she finally understood why eight years later, skin burned brown and battle scarred and hands calloused and a black flag on her ship. He was as dark as she was, but naturally so, tied up in a circle of her men, and even then his one-eyed gaze is lazy looking, dismissive, and vaguely angry and dangerous and _perfect_.

When he died one and a half weeks later, coughing and shivering and ignoring her a bit less but still inappropriate and insolent and still beautiful, died from the damned _flu_ of all things, she thinks that someone must be laughing at her.

* * *

While Kakashi somewhat _knew_, as they are rushing towards Gaara, why Naruto was rushing like he did, he didn't _understand_ why Naruto is in such a hurry about everything. Things will happen in their proper time, he thought, and rushing to a place unprepared will get you killed.

There is such a terrible tragedy in getting killed, he thought.

* * *

The sun was beautiful, but rather hot.

The snail tiredly drooped it's eyestalks in dismay, but luckily a large flat leaf was nearby, very close to the ground, leaving a pleasantly cool nook underneath it. When night arrived, the snail ventured out and established that it seemed to be a very perky growth of dandelion.

The snail returned to the dandelion the next morning because it was very accommodating, it felt very safe and familiar there, to curl up by it, though it does not know why. It'd never liked dandelions before.

But the following morning thereafter there was a hole in the ground.

There was not supposed to be just a hole.

* * *

Naruto takes one look at the waterfall where he's to be training his wind nature chakra and decides that he needs to take his shirt off. Definitely.

(He's almost there. Kakashi's nearly cracked.)

He's learned a thing or two from traveling with Jiraiya, among which is that he looks hot naked and even hotter wet. And he's learning from Kakashi how to multitask, with his jutsu.

And now he's multitasking jutsu and Kakashi all at once, with his score of damp, shirtless clones.

When he peeks down every hour or so, his sensei is pretty much still in the same position, slouching over his book with the vaguest impression of being gobsmacked. The book's still open to the same page, and even though Kakashi's posture screams "I am Not Looking", Naruto doesn't believe him.

He grins, and works harder at cutting the waterfall. And if he exhausts himself, hey, maybe the silver-haired man will catch him again when he starts losing consciousness. He'd only remember a moment of it, but at this point he'd take what he could get. And he's patient with this because he knows somehow that it's going to be a foregone conclusion.

But even with his plan he's kinda surprised when he finds himself falling, 'cause he totally thought he could have trained for another hour or two at _least_.

He feels himself caught before he hits the ground.

He lets himself sink into the darkness with a smile.

* * *

The hunter does not know why his damned dog's being so weird.

They'd finally chased down the fox that'd been harassing his chickens, and the darn thing's drooping about the house like his steak's been stolen. He'd even had to toss out the fox's tail he'd kept as a trophy because the mutt kept on snatching the thing. Its even now staring at him and making him feel all guilty.

Damn it.

* * *

"Got it Baa-chan! You can count on me!" The blond-haired brat saluted and bounced out of the room.

Tsunade rubbed her forehead, "Every time, I swear."

Shizune smiled fondly and Tsunade guessed that she was thinking about the nickname that Naruto had given the blond medic-nin. And Shizune would be wrong.

Tsunade was actually referring to, if they'd happened to meet during one of his lifetimes, how Naruto always, _always_, recognized her, on some level, despite what she called herself. And she has been known by many names: Shichi Fujukin, Benten, Bishamon, Daikoku, Fukurokuju... Lady Luck. But he always knows her, and it surprises her to no end. Perhaps its because of how he knows how generous she tries not to be, and how she fails at it. She doesn't like many people, she's fickle, and she could easily dislike someone or some place she'd once loved, but when she gives, she keeps no luck to herself.

This is why she is also known, at times, as Fate; as the one with no options to give. She sees the inevitable and falls into it anyway. She thinks of the bet that she'd made with her grandchild millennia ago, who'd raged at how the mortal he'd fallen in love with returned to stream of souls.

_This is why we discourage such love_, she'd said sadly, _Mortals should only fall in love with mortals, and we each give ourselves only one chance to learn better. _

_Then make me into a soul_, he'd demanded, _I'll find them again_.

_There are too many souls_, she replied, _As a soul yourself, you'll barely remember him and will never find him. And even if by chance you find him, he probably won't fall in love with you again. It won't work, not without tragedy. There's no way that he'll remember you._

_He will_, her grandchild insisted.

_He won't_, she replied. And she took the bet that he'd eventually offered, seeing already the Weave of his pattern and his future heartache.

But.

One day she is summoned. They _both_ summon her, and she opens her eyes and cries her outrage and she looks into her body's parent's faces and they smile down at her.

And her father says, "I win." Her mother giggles at her, closed-eyed.

She remembers promising him, them, eternity if they could find each other again both as souls, and if they could last long enough together to be considered 'lucky'. They are both shinobi and are raising a child; that is lucky indeed.

And the Weaver does not break her promises.

Though when she found out who her grandchild later rebirthed into, and did the math, well, that was the year she started drinking.

She calls out, "Come in," and Kakashi enters and she already knows to unlock her sake drawer. She waves Shizune out of the room with their signal to bring in Naruto.

"I would like to be transferred to another team." The Copy Nin states.

"No." She says, cheek on her fist, she'd been waiting for this conversation.

"I really think it would be for the best."

"That's not really a reason you know," she replies. "The answer is still no."

"I don't think I work well with them."

She snorts at him in disbelief. "Remind me again how many S-rank missing nin you've collectively managed to dispatch?"

"I don't think," is said just the smallest bit softer, then his voice raises and firms, "I should be allowed around my genin students."

"They're not genin anymore," she points out, decides to hell with it and grabs the alcohol. "Well, Naruto is, technically, but that's because the other villages refuse to test him in their exams, and no one else is willing to enter ours if he's in it." This had caused Naruto no little amount of outrage until she forced him to watch one of the experienced, though deeply _average,_ genin teams during their training. He'd come out of it wry, and never asking for another test. She continued, "And Sakura's already jounin. But I don't think we're talking about Sakura, here, are we?"

"Are you," Kakashi pauses, lightly, "Condoning this?"

She measures him with her eyes, then smiles, wide and toothy. "I'm surprised you waited this long, actually."

"_What_?"

"Oh calm down," she says, not really meaning it. "I've already bought the wedding present."

"_Wedding?_"

She'd never heard Sharigan no Kakashi get that loud, she inwardly cackles. It's of course at that moment that Naruto pokes his head in the door.

"Wedding?" The blond parrots, a question.

The bit of cheek that showed below Kakashi's right eye was brilliantly red.

"You both should get that sorted out," she suggests. Kakashi makes a choking sound.

"You're getting _married_?" Naruto yells.

She hasn't been this entertained since both the Spinner and the Shearer died; her siblings had followed her out of curiosity into the mortal world when they felt her being summoned. Frankly though, she'd never expected Spinner to stay long, he knew how to start things, but not how to make them last (be it in bed, or out). And Shearer doesn't really know how to be mortal, and thinks that destruction automatically creates growth; honestly he was better off skulking as a shadow with a farming implement. It'd still been an interesting experience being on a genin team with them and she hadn't been bored until they'd got themselves killed.

But, as she watches the verbal explosions happening in her office, she's not bored now.

Suddenly, the prospect of helping her grandchild land his One True Bedmate for the rest of Time does not seem so awful.

_Even if one of them ends up the wrong species,_ she mentally cringes, and takes a swig of sake.

* * *

_end._

* * *

Original prompt: "Gravity and eternity, is there a connection?"

AN: heee! XD I love reincarnation fic! Also, why aren't reincarnation fic more weird, huh? Huh? ::cackles::


	2. And I Would Walk 500 More

**And I Would Walk 500 More**

.o0o.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Naruto and am not making money off this.

**AN: **Brain was eaten by Tale 4's universe and Under the Oak Tree's prompt and... this happened.

**Warning:** KakaNaruKaka, non-explicit. CRACK. And hijinks. Female!Kakashi, sometimes female Naruto.

* * *

"Stop moping," her bossy best friend demanded when she opened the door. "Look, I know that you thought you'd have more time together but she was fucking _eighty_ for crying out loud. She had to go sometime."

She said nothing and slumped over to her couch, which was loaded with books, blankets, snack bar wrappers, and toilet paper. The toilet paper was because she ran out of kleenex two days ago (neither of them had— _had_, her mind screams— been drippy people and they'd only had one box in the house). The blankets and snack bars were because she wasn't moving from the spot with her trashy romance novels, being very deeply in the process of Not Thinking.

"God, I don't even know why you liked her wrinkly old bits so much," her friend huffed.

She was opening her mouth in disconcerted protest but her blond friend just held up a hand, "Actually no. Don't. I've heard it all before. 'She's gorgeous', 'She's amazing', 'She'd won a Nobel Laureate for her civil rights work', blah blah blah." Her friend plopped on the couch as well and set the bags in her arms on the ground. And started pulling alcohol out. "I swear, I never should've dragged you to that freshman seminar where she was guest speaking."

But her friend looked fond so she knew that the blond meant well.

Then she found a potted sunflower in her hands.

"Cheer up. Have a plant."

"Um."

"It'll make you feel better," her friend looked insistent.

She peered at the thing dubiously.

The blond snorted, "Think of it this way, didn't she always say she always wanted to be reincarnated as a sunflower?"

It was true. Her lover had some odd notions sometimes, but that was why she never got bored. It was so, so easy for her to be bored.

"I...suppose," she finally said.

"Great! Now put on Harold and Maude, that's always a hoot."

She found herself holding onto the sunflower for the rest of the evening.

* * *

"It's not the end of the world," her friend said, as she let herself in.

"Aa?"

"There are always more sunflowers in the field," forcibly cheerful.

"...you think I'm upset that my plant died?"

"...well, aren't you?"

She wasn't admitting to anything. But she found herself wanting to say things to the flower and turning around and it not being there anymore.

A transparent ball was shoved in her face. Chubby cheeks and huge eyes stared straight at her.

"You need something moving; active! Hyper!" her friend yelled, tilting dangerously forward. She eyed the blond and wondered if the woman was finally going to fall out of her shirt. Then her friend crouched and set the hamster ball on the floor. It wobbled a little, uncertainly, then seemed to get its bearing.

Then started circling her feet.

"Look! She likes you!"

"You trained it to do that." She glared at her friend, half-lidded and unamused.

"Nope," a grin, "Trust me, it's all her."

The circles were getting wider and wilder and was soon going to crash into the wall. She caught the ball before it did.

"So you're keeping her then?"

And she couldn't find it in her to say no.

* * *

"I think you're being entirely too angry here."

"He killed. My hamster."

"To be honest she was biting his ankle something fierce. And it was a heroic death. Who else could say that they had a hamster that stopped a robbery?"

"..._had_ a hamster," she said, disconsolately. She kicked the burglar in the nuts again; he was tied up and they were waiting for the police to arrive. She'd dropped the guy herself when she woke up, but it was already too late, and had called her best friend to rant about her hamster's murderer. The blond had come over immediately with ice cream and rope.

"You're still not allowed to kill him. How would that look in court?"

She eyed the guy and thought about dark alleys and dumpsters.

"Stop that! I know friends are supposed to help friends bury bodies but, _Christ_, it's a _hamster_, and I know you loved it and I set you guys up initi—" her friend broke off and took a long pull of her jack and coke. "Okay look, my neighbor's cat just had kittens, you should get one."

"I'm a dog person," she pointed out.

This made her friend snort. "Yeah I know. Fine, after the police arrives and I do all your paperwork _for you_, swing by with me. As a favor."

She would've agreed anyways, but the blond kept talking. So she just smiled and nodded and let the blond do all that work by herself.

* * *

"You are not going to give me something else that's going to die." She stated flatly.

"Not even as a graduation present?" her friend joked, but there was seriousness in her eyes, so she felt no need to respond.

The orange tabby had nested in her hair and woke her up mornings with its cold nose, stuck its curious ass into whatever she was studying, and humped her leg, and generally made a nuisance of himself. But she loved him. (She still refused to think of who he reminded her of.) She loved him enough to have been putting off getting him neutered even though he'd been approaching being a year old and even though she'd previously had adamant thoughts about stray kittens and population control. The idea in relation to her adorable little tabby made her cringe. And it'd never been a problem for some reason, no random piss stains or midnight yowling.

She'd approached her best friend in concern over the issue actually, but the blond just smirked and waved her off, "I don't think there's a problem. Don't... _fix_ what isn't broken, right? He's otherwise normal?"

"As normal as a cat who keeps trying to stick its head into my soup noodles could be."

"Well there you go!"

But maybe she should've neutered him, she'd thought, when she curiously followed the screeching and noise and found him as he was being literally torn apart by four other male cats, much larger, and feral. Another cat was hissing at the group from a nearby fence, and at first she thought the thing was going to join in, but the strange calico looked like it wanted to run away. So she left it alone and dove into the fray, got scratches all up and down her arms, but she got him away. The bloody ball of orange curled up exhausted in her arms as she ran, its chest heaving, and weakly began to purr. But the vet was thirty minutes away, and she could already feel his strength failing.

So she veered off to sit on a curb under the shade of a nice tree. It was sunny that day. She hummed a lullaby and scratched behind his ears, stroked his fur and looked at him. And looked at him.

An apologetic mewl sounded nearby, but she paid it no attention because there was more important things at hand.

She'd looked down at her lovely, remarkable, little tabby, and he'd shivered and peered up at her, and sighed.

He pushed against her hand a little, weakly. Blinked once.

She mentally replied, _I love you too._

Then he slid away, limp in her arms.

She felt like she was trying to swallow rocks down her throat.

Looking up, blinking rapidly, she caught sight of that weird mutant calico again. She didn't know what genetic quirk caused patches of itself to turn pink like that, and found she didn't much care. Then she realized that the calico was female.

_I should have neutered him_, she thought. _Completely fucking neutered him._

The stupid mutant kept following her though, and that's why she called up her friend despite the blond still having one last final to cram for. (But it was bio, and she had it in the bag.)

"Take her," she'd demanded, after relating the story.

Her friend sighed and prodded at her own cheek thoughtfully. Scooped up the cat.

"What, not going to force me to take something else I'm going to kill?"

"You never killed them," she replied gently.

"They _died."_

_"_And it was never your fault."

She didn't quite know how to believe that.

"Just...," her friend eyeballed her, "Just go out there and get a ridiculously well-paying job with your ridiculously huge brain. _And get some therapy. _I promise it'd sort itself out in a couple years."

She didn't reply. But a job sounded nice. Should keep her busy.

* * *

"Why did you show up here?" Her friend demanded, opening the door.

She blinked mildly, for the past decade or so she'd been all but barred from her friend's family home, when before she kept being dragged to thanksgivings and christmases because she 'shouldn't spend holidays alone at the dorms'. Instead the blond had been throwing holiday get-togethers for her friends at her apartment and for years she'd thought there'd been some kind of a falling out. She didn't ask for to politeness' sake, figuring the blond would mention it if it'd been important.

Increasingly however, there were signs that the blond had been visiting her family regularly, and when she'd idly mentioned that it was good that that the blond was seeing them again, her friend just turned to her, confused, and replied that she never stopped. So it must be just her.

She wondered if she needed to bathe more or something, but she still kept on being invited to things, so figured that must not be it. Which was why she was on her friend's doorstep.

"I'm not allowed to show up at my best friend's house?" she replied. There was shouting going on somewhere in the building, and she raised an eyebrow.

"Um," the blond hemmed, and shifted her eyes wildly.

"OH MY GOSH, it's you!" her best friend's mother rushed forward and enclosed her in a hug, "We haven't seen you in ages! I thought you two had a falling out! Dear, why haven't you been bringing her over like you used to?"

"Err."

"Why, you've never even met my son!"

"Your son?" she echoed, eyes narrowing.

"Yes, actually, it was around your graduation that I had him, that's why I couldn't make it to your ceremonies."

_You have a brother_, she hoped her eyes conveyed the severity of this extreme lack of information to what she thought was her best friend.

_I'll explain later, _her friend looked back.

_Everything, _she demanded.

"Hey! Who're you?" A figure raced up and grabbed her hand without her leave and tugged at it. She looked down into warm brown eyes and couldn't look away.

"Ah..." both her and her friend hummed. She knew hers were because she was surprised, but she doesn't know why the blond looked so disconcerted.

"Oh gosh! This is perfect! Our babysitter canceled and we couldn't find a replacement! We're already late! You don't mind, do you? You two can get to know each other!" her friend's mother waved some tickets wildly, and barely waited before she nodded before bellowing into the house. "DEAR! STOP CALLING WE'VE FOUND SOMEONE!"

Belatedly she'd realized that they were all in evening wear except for the kid, who shouted back, "I don't need a babysitter, I'm FOURTEEN!"

Then he paused, and looked up at her, "Though I don't mind if it was you."

"Such a charmer," she murmured.

Her friend made a choking noise.

Her friends parents were already at the door, "Here's your coat dear, and honey, I brought you your purse."

The blond just looked at her purse, then looked at her parents, then looked at her brother and then back at her purse. Then she sighed.

"Yeah okay." She muttered, "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"We're not going to destroy the house!" the brother huffed.

"Uh huh, whatever," the blond waved back as they left for the garage. "Be safe."

Before she could wonder what that was all about, the teenager yelled, "Come on!", and started pulling her into the house, "I have to show you around!"

* * *

_Goddammit,_ she thought, for the twentieth time, _I _knew_ I should've given them the condoms I had on me._

Fate looked sourly at her grandchild in his current reincarnation, who was going to be a father before he hit fifteen and looked pleased as punch about it, and looked at her friend who seemed a bit abashed but still held her head up high. Their fingers were curled together, his head listening at the round of her belly.

"I don't see why you're so upset about it," the brunette mentioned, "I'd dated an eighty year old and you were just amused at the time."

"You were in _college_." She replied at the same time that her biological brother started and peeked up, "Eighty?"

"Yes."

The teenager looked thoughtful, "They must've been awesome then, to catch you."

Her friend smiled, closed-eyed and fond and not too sad (she's so glad she pushed that stubborn ass into therapy), "She was."

The teen blinked, shrugged, and went back to listening.

"Actually I still have most of the money and stocks she'd left me, and didn't spend much of my own for... well a long time really. We can live off that for a decade at least."

"You're not going back to work?" she narrowed her eyes.

Her friend shook her head, "Maybe take one or two pro bono cases a year. And I might start up again after five or six years, but I want to be there for all of the baby's firsts."

"...I'm going to be there too right?" her brother's voice was a bit small.

"You're still in high school," her friend muttered and stroked his hair.

"That doesn't mean that I'm not going to be an awesome father," he said, determined. "And you said that you might not get another chance, 'cause you're all in your late thirties. Which means _I_ might not get another chance."

"But you might chang—"

"Stop it." He demanded and kissed her. "It's you. It's always going to be you. And when you die, I'll be a cranky old man and pine away."

"Pine away," her friend smiled all amused.

"Yes. With a plant. Or a dog, maybe. And I'll wack our grandkids with my walking stick because I'll be heartbroken _forever,_" tragically and with great oomph he flopped carefully against her belly. Then petted it.

"Not forever," the brunette murmured, eyes resigned.

"Forever_,_" he insisted.

_Not forever,_ Fate thought. Promised.

* * *

_end._

* * *

AN: ...so I answered my own question at the end of the last fic. Aheh.

Oh, and what Kakashi didn't know, couldn't know, and I couldn't figure out a way to stick it in without completely breaking POV, was that Naruto jumped in to save Sakura from being pounced and gang raped, cat-raped? Something.


	3. To Be the Man who Walked a 1000 Miles

**To be the Man who Walked a 1000**

.o0o.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Naruto and am not making money off this.

**AN:** Brain was eaten by crack. Pure, utter crack. XD

**Warning:** NaruKaka, KakaNaru, het, hijinks, strangeness, omfg Sasuke XD.

* * *

Sasuke loves his mother and thinks she's wonderful, even if she kind of embarrasses him sometimes, like with her constantly calling him cute even though he's fifteen and with reading her trashy novels and with his name. Who the hell named their kids something Japanese when their last name was O'Harris? The story was apparently that they'd had their honeymoon in Japan and they got him and Sakura out of it. He is still deeply unamused and is convinced that it was all his father's doing. Partially because he refused to inflict Hjálmtýsson onto his children and took his wife's last name, so Sasuke can't even hide behind people tripping over his last name and has to get stared at while people say, "But you don't _look_ Japanese."

"That's because I'm not." He always grits out; one day it will stick, he thinks.

But while his father is imminently annoying and kind of stupid and clearly doesn't deserve his wife (Sasuke refuses to admit that he's supposed to grow out of that phase), he still makes her happy. So Sasuke spends alot of time thinking up the perfect anniversary present. Year fifteen is supposed to be crystal if you're going traditional, or watches if you were going modern. But his mother hates watches and his father is hard on everything he wears. So it'd have to be crystal. Sakura's getting them one that looked like a cherry blossom tree, but he finds that just a bit egotistical. He picks one of a wolf pack.

He's confused though, at the large banquet while the presents are being opened, because while about a third of them were crystal and watches too, and a great deal were completely random, a large portion were china and platinum.

"I thought that china and platinum were for the twentieth year," he asks his half-brother Ian.

"Foolish little brother," Ian flicks at his forehead, pauses, then narrows his eyes, "There are no set gifts between fifteen and twenty. Most likely they looked at the wrong row on the anniversary tables."

The large man in the very black suit next to his brother bellows with laughter and slaps at the table. "That's what I did!" And grinned shark-like. The other dark-suited men at their table chuckles and nods, while everyone else just smiles or ignores them for their own conversations.

And Sasuke narrows his eyes. The ones who laughed or smiled all brought platinum gifts too. In fact, thinking back, they'd _always_ made mistakes in giving anniversary presents. They were, and he strains, thinking hard, always about five years off, if the past three years were any indication. Five years, his brain pokes at him, and he remembers that Ian is five years older than he is.

They never talk about who his half-brother's father is, and Sasuke had always assumed that the guy was a douche-bag who'd left his mother. Sasuke's father, when he was in high school, had babysat for Ian so often that he pretty much raised his older brother. That's how his parents got to know each other, or so the story goes.

_You and your half-brother look so much alike!,_ people would say.

_They take after their mother,_ his father always chuckles and rubs at his head, like he does when he's sheepish or nervous.

Ian, when he happens to smile, has his father's smile.

"We're brothers," he states, a revelation.

"Of course we are," Ian says lightly, and drags him out of the seat, hand as gentle as polished steel, "Come, we should give them our congratulations."

Their tablemates mostly pay them no mind, one or two raises their glasses and tells them to send their hellos. Sasuke can't seem to escape from Ian's grip.

"Father," Ian greets when they arrive, and smiles just the smallest smile. Sasuke wonders if he'd cultivated it that way, so the resemblance would be less.

"Ian! Sasuke!" Their father rises and gives them both warm smiles and large hugs as their mother watches from the table, slouching against the chair and looking very bored. They usually hid her books when there was a major event that she didn't much care for because while she could be focused, she also didn't give a rat's ass about most formalities and had a tendency of reading even in front of diplomats. Not like she doesn't have one in her purse even now, but she takes their effort in hiding her books as a sign that they Mean It.

"Congratulations on your anniversary, Father, Mother." Ian bows and hands them a present.

Their father takes the gift slowly and glances at Sasuke, their mother straightens ever so slightly from her slouch, "Thank you Ian, would you like us to open it at the table?"

Ian tilts his head.

Sasuke had never seen his brother give them a present before, and had thought that he didn't care for giving them. Their parents didn't seem to expect it of Ian which Sasuke had attributed to Ian's absent father. So he hadn't realized it may have been that Ian's been giving it to them out of sight; they look more surprised at Sasuke being there than at the proffered gift.

Their father hands it to his silver-haired wife and then scoots his chair close, he'd been banned from opening presents that year because, well, _crystal_ and his enthusiasm didn't mix. Neither, for that matter, did china, Sasuke thinks numbly as he watches his mother lift out a plate printed with a lovely portrait of their parents curled up and napping in a field; it was a candid shot that Ian had taken during a picnic.

"Oh," their mother murmurs, stroking the edge of the plate with a finger, she clears her throat, "This is very nice, thank you." Then her eyes flickers at Sasuke and his father's follows her glance and narrows, briefly.

"Ian! It's an awesome present!" he gestures broadly, and their mother deflects his arm before it smacks his water over with the ease of long practice, "But we can't leave right now and we're up to our necks in gifts and shit, think you and Sasuke could haul some of them to the coat room before I break anything?"

"We could."

"Great! I'll send someone with the rest if you can't carry them all."

Sasuke's brain is inadvertently doing the math, had in fact been doing the math even before they'd left their table but it'd kept choking on the numbers and sailing down Denial. If Sasuke's father is Ian's father, then when his father was _fourteen- _and the part of his brain that hoarded law and legalities cried s_tatutory rape_ and he couldn't_ think_ that of his mother. And he. He finds his arms piled with presents, many of which were china or platinum, and finds himself being dragged down a hall.

The coat room is empty of people and full of coats, and boxes that'd been prepared for the presents, and they set their armfuls down in them before Sasuke is inexorably led to an empty bathroom. Ian checks the windows, then locks the door.

"He's your father." Sasuke states.

Ian nods in agreement. But they'd always called Sasuke's father, Father, and that could mean anything.

"I mean, your biological father."

Ian nods again. Sasuke had always found it surprising his brother wasn't more curious about his birth father, and more angry. He supposes this is why.

"_Why didn't you tell me_?" Sasuke roars and is throwing a fist into the mirror when he finds it grabbed and twisted up behind him.

"Would it have mattered, foolish little brother?" Ian asks calmly, "Would you have kept silent?"

Sasuke opens his mouth to agree but then that part of him that'd been studying to be a cop since he was five, that part of him that saw things in black and white, shrieks that it doesn't make _sense_, his mother should be in jail. And then he gets strangled by his own thoughts and wonders how the frikken hell could he wish for _his mother to be in jail_. And then he wonders—

"But we're friends with cops." He remembers them being around ever since he was young.

"We are."

"But _you're_ a cop."

Ian shifted. "Am I?"

"I thought you were training to be one..." Sasuke thinks of all the firearms practice Ian's put in with him, and the hours at the gym and at the dojo, but then he remembers that Ian never cracked open the books and the protocol manuals that he did.

Ian releases him and Sasuke spins around to stare him in the eyes. They're steady and unflinching.

"I would do anything to protect my family," Ian says. "So would our father."

The locked door clicks open. Sasuke tenses.

"Hey, it's me." The man opens his wallet and slips his lockpicks in.

"Fin," Ian replies flatly. The large man grins even as he turns to lock the door again.

"Checking to see if you needed any backup. Also we've set up a perimeter in case things get loud."

"We?" Sasuke spits out.

They watch him. And Sasuke realizes from the way the fabric of the coat shifts that the man was packing.

"What the hell Ian?"

"We are family, Sasuke." Ian says, with weird emphasis.

"Yes, I _know_, but what is Fin doing—"

"We are Family," Itachi interrupts, and Sasuke hears the inflection this time.

When Sasuke was small he used to be pissed off a lot at his perceived injustices and ran away from home often. His father hunted him down with reassuring regularity, even that one time when he managed to get three states away. His father had just laughed and bounced him on his hip and said how proud he was for Sasuke getting and using his mother's genius brain. He'd said this while they were driving back in a dark car, with dark suited men, who were laughing and chuckling along with him. The one with fish eyes gave his father a thumbs up and congratulated Sasuke on his youthful determination, while the one with the even stranger eyes and long prissy hair was shutting off his laptop and collecting GPS and headsets from the rest. It was not unusual for them to appear whenever Sasuke runs.

He realizes, in hindsight, who those men were.

The door clicks open again. Their father and mother enter, his father sticking something into his pocket.

Sasuke could barely wait for them to close and re-lock the door before he bursts out, "You're in the mafia? How could YOU be in the MAFIA? You're so," he flails, "so... Are you even an accountant? And I thought Mother was a lawyer and did human right's work? _And why are you in the men's bathroom?_" The last he directs at her.

"Is there a problem?" she asks with an air of being deeply unimpressed.

"Sasuke," his father says, laying a hand on his shoulder. "I was fifteen, and my parents were starting to catch on and make noises about age-of-consent issues. I didn't want to take the chance that they would disapprove enough to call the cops on us, without a backup plan, so I protected my family by going to the people who knew how to get around the law. I was _not_ going to let your mom go to jail. I was _not_ going to let Ian be taken away and raised by some stranger."

"I'm a lawyer though," his mother said mildly, "I could have at least—"

"You may be awesome in court," his father interrupted, "but I didn't want it to go there, and neither did you. And while I was willing to sneak around, I wasn't going to totally stop seeing you, or sleeping with you, or raising Ian."

Sasuke reflexively stifles his cringe of horror at the idea of their parents having sex. Blargh.

Then he narrows his eyes. "You say you were fifteen." He challenges, "But you're getting anniversary presents for your twentieth year. And you're thirty four."

"Yup, he got me pregnant when he was fourteen and proposed the same year," his mother says easily. "He finally convinced me a month before Ian popped and we did it in Cancun with a bunch of friends. It took his parents awhile to catch on."

"I still wear the chain the ring stayed on before I was legal." His father grinned and pulled it out of his shirt, and from it dangled the fake dogtags crafted from steel that Sasuke had made for each of them, for what he'd thought were their eleventh anniversary. He's pretty sure they were wearing each other's and not their own.

"Well, it had to stay on a year after that," his mother corrected dolefully, "Tamora insisted we had to 'date' for awhile before we could officially marry."

Aunt Tamora was in on it too, Sasuke thinks, what the _hell_.

"I _l__iked_ our dates," his father pouted.

"We could have had sex in places other than ramen eating contests."

"But you didn't mind the—"

"STOP." Sasuke tries to glare his father into submission. The blond was only slightly cowed, which was not nearly enough for his taste.

The lock clicked.

"WHAT NOW." Sasuke shouts at the door.

"Geeze, keep your voice down," Sakura mutters, and closes and locks the thing again.

"You also knew?" he grits out. _And does *everyone* except him know how to pick locks?_

"Well, yeah, I figured it out that time you ran away from home for three weeks, and they confirmed it. And frankly I don't blame them for not telling you 'cause you were all on your justice kick and reading up on laws and tattling on everyone in school," she takes a deep breath, "And you kept _running away_ from home whenever you felt 'discriminated against' and 'misunderstood', and _never talked to me about any of it_. Thank god dad's mafia friends got me into boxing. And into the Family, no thanks to you."

And punches him in the gut, both metaphorically and literally.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he wheezes out, feeling betrayed.

"What part of how you stopped talking to your _twin sister_ do you _not understand_?" She cracks her knuckles, "God, I've been wanting to do that for _years_. How do you NOT take your twin with you when you run away from home? Honestly."

"Of course I couldn't, you were too weak. You might've been—"

"'Weak', your _sorry_ little _delicate_ white _ASS_!" She's reaching towards him as if to strangle him bodily and Ian's hauling him backwards even as Fin's trying to trip him forwards and their mother's suddenly between them, _and there's no fucking room to move_, when their father raises his hand for silence and presses on his ear with the other, "Fuck. Are you sure?"

Everyone except for Sasuke goes very still. He yanks his shoulder away from Ian and untangles his feet from around Fin's.

"Guys, we need to move, mercs from Uchiwa Inc. just crashed the party."

"The _food_ company? Hiring _mercenaries_?" Sasuke scoffs. His mother's already at the window and peering at the street and his father follows her, still talking softly, hand at his ear.

"Don't diss them, they're intense," Fin pulls out a freaking huge machete from somewhere and is sighting down it's edge. Ian's silently passing around extra clips.

Sakura nods and agrees, "Power follows money, and they're a huge company. But why would they come here?"

"I did some pro bono work with a civil suit against them for misleading health labels and irregular variants of sweeteners that encourage overeating." Their mother's eyes sag almost closed, "I didn't know they would be that pissed."

"It's lost profits," their father shrugs, and scratches at his head, "And ah, I may have shifted their funds around."

"'May'." She states flatly. "What have I said about your going at things alone?"

Their father coughs, reaches up behind his back to pull out a gun, "To not do it? And it was sorta with the Family?"

"You're _my_ partner; you don't leave your team behind." She smacks him upside the head then reaches into his pants, and Sasuke's about to hyperventilate because she's groping his dad in semi-public, _again_, but she pulls out a gun too. So instead, he chokes on his own spit.

He watches his calm, silver-haired mother check the safety and the clip with an air of confidence and long practice, and it was only a little less strange watching his red-headed sister do the same with the one she'd pulled out of her purse.

"If you didn't have to bring your book, you could've done that too," his father grumbles, nodding his head at Sakura's purse.

"But I _like_ sticking my gun in your pants," his mother replies playfully. His father coughs and turns red.

Sasuke _does not want to know._

"I thought you were going into medicine," he says at his sister desperately, while he grabs his own gun from his ankle and checks it.

"I still am, but the Family needs more than one doctor on call because sometimes there are situations where Aunt Tamora gets swamped." She's grim. "You weren't there for most of it."

"I didn't run away from home _that_ much," Sasuke mutters defensively as they slip out the window into the courtyard.

"You don't count the summer camps and the winter festivals as running away? How about the half-year exchange programs to _Europe?_"

"Hn." He never knew his sister was so bitter about that. "You could've gone yourself."

"_That's not the point_."

"_Children_, be quiet."

"Yes mother." "Yes mom." "Yes dear."

"I wasn't talking to you." She eyed their father, unamused.

"But I _like_ saying 'yes dear'." He squints at her in a smile. Then his eyes fall open, "Apparently they're staying away from the banquet hall and are targeting either you or me specifically. They've done shit with our car and Neil's doing a tug-of-war with their network guy over surveillance. North and East are open, but there's very little cover."

"You want to punch through their center don't you?"

"It demoralizes their ranks and sends a message to their leadership. Besides, I think I can get through to the head honcho. I have the charts all set up!"

"Only you," she mutters and follows him into a small patch of cover.

"Charts?" Sasuke asks his siblings as they crept towards the South entrance darting from their own bits of defense. Fin went solo since his bulk precluded partnering. Sakura shrugs and mouths, "Accounting and cost/benefit tables."

"It's actually how he'd rose up be section Boss," Ian says quietly. "He'd restructured their entire money intake into techno-theft operations and disassociated the group from prostitution and extortion schemes."

"_Boss?_" Sasuke hisses, thinks, then asks, "Wait, that _works_?"

"Profits are up, costs are down." Sakura shrugs. "And dad tries to hit the more dubious big companies."

"Hn," Sasuke grunts, "That actually..."

"Makes you feel better?" Sakura peers at him from the corner of her eye, "Are you still freaking out over their age thing? Or the legality thing?"

"I...", Sasuke likes things to make sense, he likes knowing who's in the right and who's in the wrong. And it was technically statutory rape no matter what state you were in.

Ian is very carefully not looking at him.

"It...", Sasuke likes feeling that he can see things clearly. And clearly the mafia is organized crime, with _criminals_.

Sakura is staring at the horizon and fingering her hair.

"You...", Sasuke hates and hates being lied to. Then he feels himself being pushed away. Then his father is leaning against him and _bleeding_ and Sasuke feels it like a punch right through the _lungs_.

Ian moves like a hunting bird and their assailant is on the ground and dead before they could blink. There are more gunshots in the distance. Sakura's already picking out the bullet from their father's shoulder to the sound of his hisses and their mother's shredding their father's shirt into strips. And Sasuke.

And Sasuke can only.

"_Dad_." Sasuke chokes out. And his father tilts his head to meet his eyes and a smiles spreads across his face like sunshine.

Quietly, "You've never called me that before."

_I haven't been— I'm still not— okay, with everything, yet, _he tries to convey.

_Take your time, _his dad's gaze replies.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, small. And he _feels_ his siblings as if they'd somehow curled in closer with his words.

"It's okay," his father acknowledges. His mother ruffles his hair.

_I promise I won't run anymore._

_I believe you._

* * *

_end._

* * *

AN: POOR TRAUMATIZED SASUKE. You just can't win Sasuke, YOU JUST. CAN'T. WIN. But! On the upside, no massacre. I'd originally got slammed with the idea that Sasuke would be totally wtf at being raised by Naruto and Kakashi and would keep running away from home, and then my brain piped up with the statutory rape laws, and then the idea of the mafia stuck it's head in.

And here we are.

fyi: The foxwife this time was Sasuke's family, and, sorta, Sasuke.

And um... is my sense of humor too strange for people? x.x I'm getting hits but very few reviews in proportion.

Deep thanks to Accounting no Jutsu by daniel-gudman for some inspiration. XD


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